Friday, December 23, 2005

Leo Francis Snyderwine, born December 11 during the papacy of LeoIII. Youngest son, brothers Carl, Joe, George. He graduated after 8 years at St. Joseph's School in Sharon. He went to work in industry at about the age of 14.

In 1918, he was subject to the military draft. The board reviewed his case and noted that he had three brothers in the army. They decided that they should keep one son home.

Here are some random disconnected anecdotes about Leo.

He and his boyhood friend Fred Kloos, who lived in the neighborhood, routinely drove a cow on foot from Sharon to the Kloos farm east of Mercer.
Leo worked as a young man at the Dayton Malleable Iron Co. He spent most of the 1920's working at the American Rolling Machine Co. His job involving dragging of hot iron from a hot box into the first stage of a rolling mill. They made sheet steel for the Automotive Industry. As a young man he and his friends would load their camping gear and canoes onto the baggage car of an east bound Erie Rail Road train. At Salamanca NY (headwaters of the Allegheny River) and camp an canoe down the river. Leo told me one time they were too lazy to wash the dishes and put them in a gunny sack (burlap) and drag them around the river til they were clean. I wonder if it attracted any fish. Not sure where they put out, it could have been Franklin PA. One of my father's childhood friends was Fr Basil Bauer who spent many years who did missionary work in China. He was home on leave when Leo died and attended his wake. Leo and his brothers were always getting into mischief. They were known to tipping over out houses preferably with some one inside. Even as an adult I remember he and Carl tipping one over, it was well built and Leo got a hernia. Who had the last laugh?
It's hard to imagine that there were out houses active as late as the 1930's.

Leo and his brothers and friends were party animals by today's standards. Prohibition was a big challenge for them. They made their own, sometimes with disastrous results. As late as the early 1940's there were large pottery jugs and tubs around the house. When I asked my mother about them she just laughed. Home made beer could be a problem. After being bottled and capped it was stored in the basement fruit cellar. Sometimes the bottles would explode. What a mess. Mother would be furious. When the beer was ready, bottles were taken up stairs carefully so as not to disturb the sediment. When serving they carefully poured the beer taking care not to pour the sediment. So here's a finished bottle of beer on the counter with only the sediment in it and I come along and without thinking drank every bit of the contents. YUK!!! Never again.